6 Stereotyping in different cultures

The term stereotype, as allegedly used for the first time by Walter Lippman in 1922, is used today to mean a readily available image of a given social group, usually based on rough, often negative generalizations. Although stereotypes can be positive as well as negative, they are, in everyday usage, most often understood as irrationally based negative attitudes about certain social groups and their members.

A stereotype is “...a fixed, over generalized belief about a particular group or class of people.”

For example, a “hells angel” biker dresses in leather.

The use of stereotypes is a major way in which we simplify our social world; since they reduce the amount of processing we have to do when we meet a new person.

One advantage of a stereotype is that it enables us to respond rapidly to situations because we may have had a similar experience before.

One disadvantage is that it makes us ignore differences between individuals; therefore we think things about people that might not be true.

Katz and Braly in 1933 found that students held clear, negative stereotypes – few students expressed any difficulty in responding to the questionnaire. Most students at that time would have been white Americans and the pictures of other ethnic groups included Jews as shrewd and mercenary, Japanese as sly, Negroes as lazy and happy-go-lucky and Americans as industrious and intelligent.

As such, stereotypes are not bad or good, but they can influence intercultural interactions in different ways. An observer tends to favour information that is consistent with existing expectancies, and tends to ignore, or reject information that is inconsistent with the stereotypes.

Stereotypical notions about the character of the members of the other party determine a person's emotional reactions to the other group: a strong, negative projected stereotype may result in displaced hostility. i.e. 'I behave towards you in a hostile way because I assume you to have hostile attitudes about my culture'.

We realize that in its purest form there is no such thing as stereotypes; no one person is exactly like another person and no individual is a carbon copy of another member of a group.

 

7 The impact of gestures in different cultures

Gesture is seen accompanying speech. Man makes gestures without speech also. Gesture is symbolic action by which a thought, a feeling or intention is voluntarily expressed in a conventionalized (established by general agreement/acceptance, or accepted usage) form. Gesture is different from the real act. For example, the real act of drinking when performed for a drinking purpose is action per se, whereas when the act of drinking is mimicked. or performed symbolically as in the case of Holy Communion in the Christian church, it becomes a gesture. The real act of smoking is action, whereas the movements that one makes as if one is smoking is gesture. In the examples given, there is some similarity between real acts and the " gestures" that indicate these real acts.. There are very many instances in which gestures do not have any similarity between themselves and the acts or objects they stand for. For instance, in the sign language used by the Red Indians (American Indians), the sign for a laddle, which is made keeping the palm curved like a laddle, comes to denote drinking and from this meaning it ultimately stands for 'water'. There is no similarity between 'water' and this gesture. Thus, the gestures become not only conventionalized but could also be holding a relationship of arbitrariness between themselves and the acts and objects they refer to.

Gestures ore formed by movement of the facial muscles, head, limbs or body. These movements may express or emphasize a thought, feeling or mood. They may accompany speech or may be used in the place of speech as found among deaf-mutes, among people who do not know each other's language or among those who have taken a vow of silence and so on. In addition to their use as an accompaniment to speech and their use as an independent means of communication (in place of language) between individuals and groups, gestures are also frequently used in the aesthetic acts, in the theatre and dance, and in religious and/or secular ceremonies.

There are at least three major divisions - use of gesture by itself as the language, as in the case of deaf-mutes; use of gesture as an independent means of communication, an additions to the use of oral language, as in the case of sign language used by American Indians. There is also yet another category in which use of gesture either as an accompaniment to oral speech or as an independent system of expression is elevated to the aesthetic level and is exploited in aesthetic arts. Finally, use of gesture in all the above is resorted to for both social purposes and purely individual goals. Under social purposes, use of gesture for expression relates to establishment of interpersonal ranking, good manners, communication/communion with gods, maintenance of social identity, etc. The purely individual goals include maintenance and exhibition of the level of intimacy between individuals, secret communication, etc. While these are exploited at the aesthetic levels, use of gesture itself in the aesthetic arts not only accentuates the effects but also creates and maintains the effects; in other words, it conducts the episodes in several cases.

Gesture is, indeed, present and exploited in every walk of human life. Poyotos' definitions of gesture (Poyotos, 1975) brings out the salient features of gestures clearly: 'By gesture, one understands a conscious or unconscious body movement made mainly with the head, the face alone, or the limbs, learned or somatogenic, and serving as a primary communicative tool, dependent or independent from verbal language; either simultaneous or alternating with it, and modified by the conditioning background (smiles, eye movements, a gesture of beckoning, a tic, etc.)'.

Gesture is characterized in literature in very many different ways. Each one of these characterization focuses one or the other aspect of gesture. Gesture is described as follows:

1) It is a silent language.

2) It is talk without talk.

3) It is mother utterance of nature.

4) It is natural.

5) It is universal

6) It is figurative

7) It is picturesque.

8) It has clarity.

9) It has picturesque novelty.

10) It is metaphorical.

11) It is poetic nature

12) It is iconic.

13) It is pantomimic.

14) It is cheiromimic.

15) It is affective.

16) It is a surrogate for spoken language.

17) It is a substitute for spoken language.

18) It is a lexical ideograph.

19) It is speech by gesture (gesture speech of mankind).

20) It is visual language.

21) It consists of the visual attitudes of the soul.

22) It is innate language.

23) it is an air picture.

24) It is an essential adjunct to human language.

25) It is a great human accomplishment.

26) It is hand talk.

27) It is syntalk.

The body parts and other items of processes that are generally involved in the production and communication of gestures are as follows:

1) Face,                                     15) Moustache,

2) Head,                                    16) Chest,

3) Eyes,                                     17) Breast,

4) Ears,                                     18) Place of heart,

5) Skin,                                     19) Arms,

6) Breath,                                  20) Elbows,

7) Mouth,                                  21)Hair,

8) Lips,                                      22) Fore head,

9) Palm,                                     23) Throat,

10) Hands,                                 24) Nose,

11) Fingers,                                25) Legs,

12) Tongue,                                26) Shoulder,

13) Chin,                                    27) Back, and

14)Cheeks,                                28) Torso.